In many technical systems an output signal has to precisely follow a given input signal. A particular example is a radio-frequency (RF) power amplifier (PA), although the principles and solutions disclosed in this document are generally valid.
For the radio frequency power amplifier it is important that the (complex-valued) output signal envelope is, to within a very strict approximation, proportional to the input signal envelope. This is called a linear power amplifier. Deviations from this ideal situation are called non-linearities. To produce and run an ideal power amplifier that has small enough non-linearities is, in most cases, uneconomical and unpractical. It is often more advantageous to use a linearized power amplifier (LPA) that is composed of the actual power amplifier together with other components that compensate for the non-linearities of the power amplifier.
An often used method for this is predistortion linearization. Here the input to the power amplifier is distorted in such a way that the non-linearities of the actual power amplifier are compensated for. Thus, the output of the linearized power amplifier is proportional to the input of the predistorter. A problem of the predistortion linearization method is that the adjustment of the predistorter to achieve this result is very critical. In particular the characteristics of the power amplifier are generally “drifting” due to temperature variations, aging, moisture, etc. This means that the predistorter has to continuously adjusted to account for these changing characteristics.
The generally accepted solution to this adjustment problem is to use adaptive predistortion linearization. The output of the power amplifier is measured by an observation receiver and compared to the input of the linearized power amplifier. An adapter adjusts the predistorter so that the output signal is indeed proportional to the input signal. A problem with this solution is that the observation receiver is rather complex and costly due to the high bandwidth requirements on the involved components.